Haitians must proceed with their presidential election this year despite the burden of earthquake damage, the top UN official in the country said on Thursday.
Acting UN mission chief Edmond Mulet said Haiti cannot afford constitutional “slippage” as it rebuilds from the Jan. 12 disaster.
Two elections had been scheduled this year before the quake ravaged the capital. Legislative elections planned for last month were canceled, but no decision has been announced about the presidential contest slated for the fall.
Haitian President Rene Preval has pledged to step down at the end of his five-year term next February. The Constitution bars Preval from seeking re-election.
There is a constitutional reform effort under way that could change the limit, but Mulet said, “I can assure you he doesn’t want to stay” in office.
Meanwhile, the coming tropical storm season will brutally lash most of the 1.3 million people left homeless from the quake despite the best efforts of aid groups, relief workers said on Thursday.
That grim assessment came as international efforts coalesced towards a joint strategy to rebuild Haiti, with a series of upcoming meetings culminating with a March 31 conference in New York.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), overseeing aid efforts on the ground, says the emergency phase of relief operations is over, with food, water, health services and makeshift shelters having been distributed.
But those advances are now threatened by the Caribbean rainy season. By the end of next month, daily prolonged storms will turn roads into fast-flowing rivers, trigger mudslides and contaminate clean water sources with sewage and the remains of the thousands of unrecovered corpses decomposing in the rubble of buildings. Mounting concerns have forced aid groups and the government to change tack and advocate the voluntary resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people from the crowded tent camps, most of which will turn into expanses of mud.
OCHA spokeswoman Kristen Knutson said moves were being made to clear rubble and set up sanitation facilities in five locations outside the capital for the new settlements.
“This is just one of a multitude of solutions for people to consider,” Knutson said, explaining that residents who were able to return to their shattered neighborhoods were also being encouraged to do so.
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